24 May
2012
24 May
'12
11:34 a.m.
Paper tape is punched at 10 characters per inch,
so you'd get 170
bytes off the tape per scan.
Only if you're unimaginative enough to not loop the tape back and scan
multiple segments of it per scan. I have neither scanner nor paper
tape at ready hand, but I'd guess that I'd get some eight to ten
lengths of tape side-by-side on the scanner bed.
Of course, that's only a factor of some eight to ten improvement.
No, the right answer for me is to use one of the dozen or so commerical
readers I have here. ASE33s, Trend HSRs and UEDs, an HP2748 a DEC PS04,
and so on.
It's still not all that easy (a lot harder
for _me_ tham making a
tape reader from scratch).
Well, sure. We already knew the right answer for you was to build the
reader. :-) And software
to process the scanned images....
I considered mentioning that. I didn't, because I'd need to write some
host software either way: either software to process the scanned images
or software to interface to whatever hardware interface I build.